Saturday, September 04, 2010

How Does PC World Stay in Business?

There's a reason I hate going to PC World, and yet like a dog returning to its sick, I continue to do so. Today's visit illustrates why I reckon its the chain store with the worst customer service in Britain. It's staffed by acne-ridden, monosyllabic teenagers with barely a GCSE between them, few of whom know anything about the products they are supposed to be flogging. And its computer system seems to hail from the time of Noah's Arc. It makes BBC Basic look state of the art.

Anyway, why did I end up there today? Because Olly Grender, bless her heart, finally persuaded me to buy an iPad after she showed me all the things she did on hers. She has a lot to answer for. So, I've decided to go over to the dark side. I started to order one online from the Apple Store, but then thought, bugger it, I want one and I want it now, so off I trolled down to PC World in Tunbridge Wells. Normally when I try to buy anything from there, there's some sort of problem. Usually they haven't got what I want in stock, but today I thought I had struck lucky, as yes, they had a 65GB 3G iPad in stock and also a Vodafone SIM to go with it. Excellent, I thought.

Then their computer system seized up. Five minutes later the assistant started asking me my marital status. I never quite know how to answer that one. They don't have a box for 'civil partnered'. So I said 'married'. He then asked how many credit cards I had. Er, none of your business, I said. In any case, I haven't a clue. Why do you need to know that, I asked. I should have known the answer. The computer says so, said the nerd-geek. He then told me all the other personal info they would require. This was all to set up a direct debit for Vodafone, nothing to do with PC World! I have never had to give any of that sort of info to Vodafone, so I am damned if I am going to give it to PC World, supposedly on their behalf.

I told them exactly where they could shove their iPad and have just come home and ordered it via the Apple Store. Which of course I should have done in the first place. Lesson learned.

How does PC World manage to stay in business? Because I am buggered if I know.

I don't do PC World for major purchases any more because they are too expensive - but I did many years ago before the internet became as useful as it did, and I got the best piece of customer service from a shop that I had ever had and had since.

I am not a middle aged man, but I too a m very dissatisfied PC World ex customer Why - bad service yes and indifferent serviceA computer taken in there under warrenty that took eight weeks to get back.Lack of stock and better prices elsewhereI too wonder how they survive

Assume you were taking out a Vodatone contract? If you were going to go pay-as-you-go they wouldn't gave needed the info.

I'm inclined to agree about PC World, but they are a chain, catering to those without the skills to buy from a more specialist retailer. In this case, though, I think you're being more than a little unfair.

I've often wondered. They have some very high-rent properties, but I never see anyone in there actually buying stuff.

The one in Lincoln has never got anything in stock, and the one in Peterborough can't get the price of things right to save its life.

There is one in Poole, Dorset, which has the most bizzare things on sale, like 5 year old HP laptops "upgraded by our technicians" to Vista, and 'manager's specials' which consist of customer returns with all the cables missing for a couple of quid off the original price.

I walked in at 10am. 5 minutes later I walked out the proud owner of one iPad and a '3' Sim. No hassle, other than a security call from my credit card company because of 'out of pattern' spending (big deal).

Mind you, the set up of the '3' Sim was fairly tortuous - it took half an hour over the phone when I got home, but I think 90% of that was cultural differences: the other end was based in Hyderabad or somewhere like it!

3) Whilst testing desired product, subtly see how easy it is to break, scratch or pull apart desired product to test build quality. Clumsily drop it on floor whilst testing to see whether it still works once dropped.

4) Write down model number of desired product, say "thanks very much", leave store sharpishly and head home to search amazon.co.uk, kelkoo.co.uk and google for cheapest online price.

PS Apparently, if you are a member of the Tory party, they are also supposed to ask you whether you have ever shared a hotel room with a 25 year old man. They must have forgotten to ask you that.

Iain, now perhaps you can understand why I am so frightened by Lansley's plans to privatise ALL hospitals? The private sector just treats you as the holder of a credit card, a source of profits. There is no concept of "service".

To be fair to them, since competition has pushed prices down so much, they cannot give you any more than the barest of services. (This is the EasyJet/RyanAit model, get used to it, we will see that in health, education and local authority services in the next few years).

As to the additional information? That's easy to explain. PC World sell it on. Where do you think that the credit rating agencies like Experion get their information from? (Other than personal information, they analyse large datasets of information.) DSG (Dixons/Curries/PC World) are very good at making as much money out of you as possible. But as an ardent capitalist I would have thought that you would be in favour of what they do.

I agree with you on the PC World bit ... poorly trained and ignorant staff. They don't know their products. Quite often items are mis-priced, or not labelled. Many items such as cables and small simple accessories often 10-20x what you can get them on the internet. I avoid them.

Finally ... Vodafone for iPad .. Why? It's £10 for 1gb each month, £25 for 5gb. The 3 tariff is only £7.50 for 1gb and £15 for 10gb. By far better value. These pay-as-you-go iPad tariffs aren't linked to any mobile plan. I've been happy with the 3 coverage, and it's the cheapest one by far.

sorry carl - you dont need all that info for a credit check. you need your address and a bank account to take the payment for the montly subscription for. i have never been asked how many credit cards i have.

we all know what these companies do - they sell the information on and i suspect thats what PC World are doing. thewy are taking more information than they need because it gives them more to sell

Iain why do you not find a small local computer shop. I have used them all the time without problem and their knowledge is second to none. Shop around and find one you like. You will not be sorry and I guarantee they will not be the slightest bit interested in your marital status.!!!

Not all PC Worlds are that bad and I've had hassle when buying from Amazon. It may also be difficult to attract good quality staff in Tunbridge Wells for the same pay rates that are adequate in Sunderland or Swansea

Dear God Iain. I would have hoped you would have learnt. Never shop at PC world. They are horribly incompetent. Every single thing I have ever bought from them has failed horribly within a few months. Don't touch them with a bargepole.

My last experience was returning a printer which died after three weeks - the excellent customer service department gave the sage advice 'it's fu**ed mate'.

Firstly I d figured that without his expert help. However I did have to spend best part of an hour arguing for a refund [and quoting consumer law at length] before they realised that the best thing they could do is get me out of the shop with a refund.

ONLY reason to buy is if you KNOW what you want and it s cheap.

PC world is possibly the only business of its scale where the customer service offered on the Post Office counter on 'benefit day' is vastly superior. Avoid at all costs.

Unless it is too late for you Iain, you'd do better to get a non-3G IPad and buy a PAYG MiFi from 3 to go with it for about £50. That'll hook you up to the 3 coverage when you can't get free wifi, and you're not paying the £25/monthly contract.

I rarely use more than £5/monthly PAYG on 3, and I surf the net / do emails etc most days of the week on the Peterborough / King's Cross commute on the East Coast main line. Holds the signal pretty well, except through the north London tunnels. In the office or on the sofa at home I can get the internet on my wifi, ditto most hotels for free.

Ski Test... "PC world is possibly the only business of its scale where the customer service offered on the Post Office counter on 'benefit day' is vastly superior. Avoid at all costs."

Brilliant comment. Talk about "in a nutshell". PCWorld is a fine place to go if your printer ink has run out and you have to get a new one like THIS MINUTE. Otherwise go to DABS, Maplin or better yet your friendly local one-man band specialist.

Oh and as for Apple stuff, the comparison I would make is with the Bang & Olufsen Hi Fi equipment. It looks great, but it's actually gimic-laden crap. And it's all Proprietary Software too. None of their stuff works on anything else, just like IBM in the 1970s. That HAS to be a big step backwards to the bad old days.

you have it backwards - PC World is a de facto monopoly for those who do not want to think or choose and who have been "told" by constant propaganda that it is a great place.

Ring any bells?

PC World is the "bog standard" sink comprehensive of computer supply. It is bad because people put up with it. Under Socialist/Statist thinking, Apple Store would be shut down because it was only used by a "pushy elite" who thus gained superior service and created a "two tier" Market.

I've worked in telesales for a load of the big mobile and utilities firms.

A contract of employment with a multinational utilities giant is like a licence to defraud the general public with complete and utter immunity!

On my Saturday morning shifts, still a bit drunk from Friday night, I sometimes used to have to hit the 'personal' button (they time how long it takes you to go to the toilet in these places) so I could stop laughing about it.

In a rash moment while in sixth form, I decided I needed a job. So, I got myself down to Currys (owned by the same folks who own PC Worlds, and the two stores often share stock) and got a job selling and working on the tills. So for a few months at the end of 2007/start of 2008, I was the precisely the employee you bemoan. I knew nothing about electrical items, I'm sure I had a spot of acne, and yes, when the computer asked me to take information, I did so.

But there seem to be fairly obvious reasons for doing so. If someone's buying something on credit, we clearly needed to do a credit check. If someone's buying a television, we were legally required to take certain information for licensing purposes. And yet people like you always get huffy about it: as if 1. Currys would make sale of the item contingent on receiving the information if it wasn't a legal/financial necessity, or 2. The individual employee is going to sell you the item without taking the information that they are contractually obliged to take. It's their job. They have to do it.

Ultimately, I was always more willing to help customers who were polite and didn't act as if evrything was my fault. It's inevitable that in an organisation like Currys or PC World, not every salesperson can know all there is to know about laptops - but if you're polite to staff, they're a) generally willing to help you acquire the information you want and b) more likely to help find you a cheaper way of getting what you want.

Now I understand why you need an Executive Assistant to keep the world at arm's length.Most companies ask for apparently unnecessary information to assist their marketing and advertising people with selling you more stuff. Vodafone information probably = commission for the company.

It's safe to say that PC World is pretty awful, even by the low standards of the high street today. I don't think your depiction of their staff is entirely fair, but I would say they have a horrible penchant for endlessly pestering their customers. If I want help or want to buy a product, I will tell them I want to do that. They don't need to come up to me every 2 minutes asking that. You do get some staff who are excellent, but they are hard to find.

Service standards tend to be higher from Monday to Friday, I would say. You get a lot more teenagers and such come the weekend. Nothing wrong with that, but many of them are there simply to earn their crust. Mind you, considering the pittance most service sector staff get paid, I'm not surprised the sector is plagued by disinterested and apathetic workers.

I really must find out if Gordon Brown has ever said anything positive regarding PC World. If he has, that would explain why the place appears to be cursed.

Is 'buggered' a term you should be using.However good critique of an awful establishment, if you think Tumbridge Wells is bad you should try the Lakeside(Essex)branch, there you can lose the will to live.It is a pity that a director of the DSG Group cant read your comments as they are probably unable to use a computer as no training is required to work there.

You state that PC World is "staffed by acne-ridden, monosyllabic teenagers". Perhaps you might consider the offence and upset you and others cause to people who suffer from acne by trotting out this nasty rhetoric. You wouldn't write "blind, monosyllabic", or "black, monosyllabic", or "female, monosyllabic". So why do you feel it is acceptable to mock people with acne, who often feel extremely self-conscious and intense psychological pain.

well i would say congrats on buying your shiny new toy but sadly i just cant.

you ask how a company like pc world can stay in business and i'm sorry to answer because of people like yourself, it makes no difference how pretty an item is, what matters is if it can do the job required and sadly the i-products fall in to the former category, sure they look nice but i'd rather have access to all of the internet than access to part of it and i'd rather have the freedom to run the apps i wanted not be told which ones i'm allowed to buy.

i hope your website doesn't use "flash" because if it does there will be no new posts appearing unless you get to a cyber cafe or find someone with a far cheaper and much better tablet computer that does a proper job rather than look pretty.

oh and btw rumour says ipad 2 will be shown in January so you just bought something that is not only overpriced and under equipped for the real world but its about to be outdated too.

This is actually why I rejected Three's notionally cheaper tariff for O2's: Three demanded both credit card AND bank details, along with all the credit check minutiae, even though they only charge by direct debit and the plan is a PAYG one - all in broken English from a call centre which obviously wasn't anywhere near the UK. At the end, I was told I had been put on the £15/month tariff - not the £7.50 one I had wanted all along - and that it was now "too late" for Three to correct their mistake, but I retained the option to cancel if I wanted. Of course, when I immediately called back to cancel, I was told it was still too early to cancel, so I would have to call back later...

With O2, on the other hand, I put the SIM in, entered my credit card details on-screen, and was online. The end. Well worth an extra £2.50 per month, even if it didn't get me WiFi access in a lot of places as well!

I did wonder myself how PC World survive. Dreadful barns, full of overpriced rubbish.

They don't even pretend to try: Their discounts are fake. They stock Belkin stuff. The TVs are purposely set up so that you can't compare the displays in a meaningful way. Misleading shelf tech spec information. They've been known to sell repackaged goods as new. Their Tech Guys don't listen to your clear explanations. They also assure you that they won't reformat your hard drive, and then do exactly that, charging you the earth for what you could have done at home yourself using the recovery partition. Often what you want or have seen advertised is out of stock, and apparently PCW don't use computers themselves, as you can never find out when a particular item will be back on the shelf again.

So how do they get away with it? Careful observation indicates that PCW thrive on impatient people, impulse purchasers, people pressed for time or otherwise desperate, and those people who need their advice (God help them). Some of their customers are also distrustful or older persons, who don't like using their plastic online. There are more of all these types of people than you might think. Where I live (South London), they also get a lot of business from the large number of people who don't actually have access to plastic or even private broadband. For those that do, they make at least as much profit again per item from'0%' HP agreements. Then of course there are the little side extras like flogging your personal details as mentioned.

I notice that the smaller an item is at PCW, the more outrageous the relative price, and the PC sector is notable for the number of cables, memory sticks and other small doodads necessary.

I can't imagine why anyone would buy an iPad from them, but if you are that instant gratification addict, or just need some printer's ink, then from a customer service point of view, it is slightly better to have your printer beep on a weekday than a weekend.

You do have to laugh at PCW's current tagline: 'The expert's choice'. Lie much? That's corporate chutzpah on a level with McD's insisting that their establishments are restaurants.

They were probably struggling to find a "65GB" ipad! Seriously, agree with your comments - but for gods sake in order to write the article you know better than to sponsor Dixons (in all their guises; Currys, PC World, Curry's PC World, Dixons onlin etc) with YOUR money.

They are truly the WORST retailer in the UK and you should have known better.